1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electrical connectors and, more particularly, to filtered electrical connectors having ferrite members.
2. Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 5,489,220 discloses a filter connector with a ferrite barrel for two electrical contacts. U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,522 discloses a filtered connector with a multi-piece ferrite block. A problem with these types of ferrite blocks is that they must be made of electrically non-conductive ferrite oxide to prevent short-circuiting of the contacts and, therefore, cannot filter lower frequencies (about 1.ltoreq.50 MH.sub.z) without increasing length of the ferrite block and thereby increasing the size of the connector. For a filtered connector intended to be used in a small space, such as an air bag connector, increasing the size of the connector is not desired. If an electrically conductive ferrite oxide material needed to be used for lower frequency attenuation, such as about 1-150 MH.sub.z, electrical insulators would need to be added between the contacts and the ferrite block.